


The birds one last time

by Niedergeschlagen



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: (we die like men), Everybody Lives, F/M, Fix-It, Light Angst, M/M, Not Beta Read, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Very light hinting at Stanley's suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 05:10:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21488896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niedergeschlagen/pseuds/Niedergeschlagen
Summary: Bill slid his hand down his forearm from the bend of his elbow and returned his attention to Stanley's palm."Tell me about her," Stanley pleaded, " – the woman you wanted Audra to be.”***Stanley takes a solitary walk to the Quarry after the Losers defeat IT. Bill follows because he always does.
Relationships: (very much in the background - blink and you'll miss it), Bill Denbrough/Stanley Uris, background Ben/Beverly and Richie/Eddie
Comments: 6
Kudos: 73





	The birds one last time

**Author's Note:**

> CONTENT WARNING:  
\- There is some evasive discussion about Stanley's suicide attempt (in this story, he never actually attempts it, but I mention the razor blades and he's sitting in the bathtub, as well as Bill asking about it). It's not explicit at all nor is the word suicide ever even used, I just wanted to let you know, just in case. There is a mention of Stan's intrusive thoughts.  
\- Stanley is depressed.

* * *

The Quarry was silent in the early light of the morning as Stanley made his way through the thicket to the rocks by the water. The water – dirty and muddy as it was – glimmered an emerald shade when the groggy Sun kissed its still face. Stanley had always liked the quiet and the solace of the Quarry where the edges of Derry frayed and bled into the bucolic New England nature, even if the town itself was what, going on its thirtieth year, Richie called a shithole.   


Even the birds were quiet. Stanley saw a cardinal perched upon a juniper branch but the bird did not sing. It should not have been eerie but he was still keyed up after the sewers. He felt the same way he'd felt the morning after they had first fought IT; victorious down to the bone but apprehensive all the same, almost like some unknown force was still whispering in his ear, readying him for some undeserved comeuppance for killing IT; a dead-set certainty that they had not truly won and that the malevolent something was still lurking in the shadows, and they remained haunted.   


Stanley clenched his fists but when nothing came, only another moment of serenity passed, he let his white-knuckled grip loosen. For one reason or the other, the old tongue twister of Bill's from their childhood sprang to the forefront of his harried mind. _He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts_. He could very nearly hear Bill stuttering his way through the words. It helped calm him down. Thinking about Bill calmed him down.  


Thinking about Bill also hurt.  


Thinking about Bill had always hurt, so it wasn't unbearable, though it was amplified by the proximity, both physical and emotional. He hadn't been this close to Bill in nearly three decades and the absence had made his heart grow fonder, ebullient. Stanley could remember only one instance when thinking about Bill had not hurt but rather soothed him wholly, anointed him. He had been sitting in the rapidly cooling bath with his hands under the surface of the water, fingers interlaced, tucked between his thighs to keep them warm as fear roiled in the pit of his stomach. The pungent stench of terror following the phone call had settled into the pores of his skin.   


"Swear it." A boy stepping through the anxious haze from the deep, repressed recesses of his aphasic mind. Stanley had flushed crimson with the heat of relief. It wasn't just him; there was Bill. Always Bill.  


He had packed away the razor blade and stepped out of the tub the moment Patty had come knocking at the door, sounding afraid. She had been holding a can of beer, a pearl of nervous sweat on her forehead, and Stanley had known at that moment that she had known – that she had _understood. _  


"I'm so sorry," he had said and embraced her, and she had clutched him tighter than ever before. They had sat down together in the living room and he had told her about his childhood friends, beginning with his best friend, Richie Tozier, and ending with the courageous, charismatic Big Bill.  


And Patty had listened, and best of all, she had understood, without Stanley having to spell anything out for her. It was as if she had been able to see right inside his head; it was as if their synapses had connected, snapping thoughts in and out of each other's minds. Patty had patted his knee and asked if Bill Denbrough was the same William Denbrough was the sme prolific horror author whose books littered their bookshelves.   


"You love him, don't you, darling?" she had asked, her voice a wellspring of sympathy.   


"I do," Stanley had said, earnestly, sincerely, "in every way."  


"That's good. We all need to love."  


"Patty, I love –"  


"Me," she had finished for him. "I know you do, darling. You just love Bill Denbrough cosmically and eternally, with no boundaries and discretions."  


It was easy to love Patty Uris, Stanley mused, but it was even easier to love Bill Denbrough. Cosmically and eternally, with no boundaries and discretions. It was like breathing. A vitality.   


Stanley sat down on the edge, flirting with the idea of toeing the line of the rocky bank and the mellow green water. He took his shoes and socks off and submerged his feet. It felt good to reclaim it – the water, being in it – after the bathtub. He had been taking short showers in the Town House with a whirlpool of intrusive thoughts telling him to end it all anyway. But this felt nice, comfortable.  


He looked at the motionless scene around him. His mind filled like a sink with a barrage of childhood memories of having Richie on his shoulders in the water, and jumping off the ledge after Beverly, of Eddie's delighted shrieks, and Ben and Mike's low murmuring conversations. Sunny images, all of them, children splashing around in the water, laughter that was light, and certain secrets of the universe becoming unravelled in front of their juvenile eyes – love that was overconsuming and all that mattered.   


As the Sun climbed further up in the sky towards its zenith, Stanley remembered the smell of Derry. The smell of those memories was different from what it was now. IT had burrowed its roots so deep into the very foundations of the town that even the smell of Derry had changed since ITs death. For just a split second, a fleeting moment, really, Stanley allowed himself to miss it. He revelled in the nostalgia though it felt treacherous. ITs talon of terror had pierced the veil of time and distance a long ago and dug its monstrous essence deeper and deeper into the marrow of the world, and Stanley knew he should have felt grateful to have IT gone but being a grownup, more so being out of that black-and-white world of childhood simplicity was terrifying. He didn't know if they would remember each other afterwards when they'd left Derry. A part of him wanted to stay. To settle into his parents' old house and never leave, for the fear of losing the only thing that hit the flints of something huge and indescribable within him, sparking such fierce emotion he felt he would asphyxiate under its weight.  


"Thought I muh-might find you here," Bill spoke behind him. He kicked off his sneakers and sat down next Stanley, knocking their knees together lightly. "Everything ah-alright?"  


The previous day, they'd all crawled out of the collapsing tunnels underneath the skeletal ruins of the house on Neibolt Street and dragged themselves to the Quarry in a victorious daze before falling into a haphazard heap in the Town House lounge, starving and aching for the comfort of one another. Today, they had splintered off – Beverly and Ben and Mike had gone to breakfast, Richie and Eddie had stayed in bed, twisted up in each other like a pretzel, and Bill had sat down in the lounge to phone Audra. Stanley had wandered off to the Quarry to be alone. But now, Bill was there.   


"Just trying to process everything, really," he said. He couldn't bring himself to look Bill in the eye, and so he spoke to his own feet. The old nerves seemed to have returned. "Everything's different now, isn't it?"  


Bill nodded. "Buh-but it's t-the same, still. Seven, ah, out of seven."  


"Seven out of seven," Stanley confirmed. He had been thinking about it as well.   


"I think my wife m-muh-might be le-leaving me," Bill said.   


"Not the other way around?" Stanley didn't know what had possessed him to say that. He grimaced. "Sorry."  


To his surprise, Bill only laughed. "No, it's okay. I think it's buh-been a long time c-coming. I haven't been the b-b-buh-best husband to her – to Audra."  


"How so?"  


Truth be told, Stanley had a hard time believing there was a single thing that Bill wasn't good at, the best.   


He watched Bill fidget with the sleeve of his flannel. "Bill?"  


"Suh-sorry, sorry. I sp-spaced out. I t-think I wuh-was j-just always d-d-d… shit. De-demanding. For her to b-buh-be the woman I needed her to, to, to... needed her to, to be."  


Stanley laid a hand on the back of Bill's neck and gave it a little squeeze. They had done that sometimes as teens, Stanley remembered when Bill's stutter had gotten too strong for him to muscle through a sentence and he'd been overwhelmed by it. Stanley had always reached to comfort him, just a little, never too much, never too on the nose.   


He thought about Bill's words. He had never had that with Patty. He had always subconsciously known the difference between Patty and Bill but he had also never thought to compare the two. They were both lovely in their own, distinct, succinct ways. Yet he couldn't fault Bill for desiring something different. Someone different – perhaps someone who was on the same wavelength.   


Stanley thought about Mike staying behind, stuck in the eye of the hurricane for three decades, holding down the fort, knowing his friends had forgotten about him in the cruellest twist of fate possible, holding out hope that one day they would return, all the while dreading the reason for their homecoming. He thought about Beverly and Eddie, tormented, trapped, regressed. Ben alone in his huge, airy house so unlike a coffin, but alone, always _alone_. Richie, drifting, on a bender after bender, an empty husk of a person. He thought about himself, acutely longing for someone whose name he couldn't even remember, tossing and turning with lucid nightmares whose subject always slipped away when he awoke.   


He gave Bill's neck another squeeze before letting go. As he went to retrieve his hand, Bill grabbed a hold of it.   


"Is t-this okay?"  


Stanley nodded. "Yes."  


Bill's thumb swept across the expanse of his hand, brushing over the ridges of his knuckles a few times before he flipped Stanley's hand over, palm upwards, and pressed his fingers against the thin skin of his wrist.  


"I, I had these d-d-dreams before."  


"What do you mean?" Stanley asked, though he already had an inkling.   


Bill drew a long line on his inner forearm, from his wrist to his elbow. "Juh-just flashes, f-feelings. Were you, were, were you guh-going to – ?"  


"Yes."  


"Why?"  


Stanley sighed. "I was terrified."  


"Why, why did-didn't you?"  


"Because it wouldn't have been fair."  


They sat together without talking. The Sun was overcast by one of the sparse clouds drifting by. The world was grey and grainy.   


A bird tittered. Its call sounded like laughter and choked barks, followed by a few short, consecutive whistles.  


"A Canada jay," Stanley said. He looked around, observing the trees and the bushes around them but could not see the bird. He whistled low, replicating the birdsong. After a few seconds, the jay responded. 

Bill slid his hand down his forearm from the bend of his elbow and returned his attention to Stanley's palm.   


"Tell me about her," Stanley pleaded, " – the woman you wanted Audra to be."  


With foggy recognition, he knew he was digging for that delicious oyster of pain lodged deep within him. How stupid and masochistic. He also felt the fingers skating on his palm falter, just for a moment.   


"He," Bill said, "the puh-person I w-wuh-wanted her to, to, to be is a ma-man."  


"I always thought you loved Beverly."  


"As kids we tho-thought, we thought we luh, luh, loved each other. But she's always loved Ben the buh-best, ha-hasn't she? And me, I, I, I always luh-loved you the best."  


Stanley's heart stuttered. "Me?"  


Bill closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. His lips moved silently. When he opened his eyes again, they shone with brilliant resolution. "I'm in, in love with you. I, I'm suh-certain. I've b-been in luh-love with you always."   


Big Bill had always been the boldest of the lot.   


"Apnd I know you, you're, you're married, and you luh-love her but I th-thought you ought to, to. You ought to know."  


Big Bill had always been the boldest of them all but the rest of them were pretty brave as well.   


"I'm in love with you, too."  


"Really?" Bill looked like he had said something utterly ludicrous.   


Stanley couldn't help the smile that bloomed on his face. "Bet your fur."  


If they'd been in a story, the Sun would have emerged from behind the cloud coverage and the birds in the Quarry would have exploded into an unexpected symphony but they were real people in the real world, which meant the sky remained grey and grainy, but Bill brought Stanley's hand to his lips and kissed his knuckles, which made him feel like maybe they were in a fairytale, just a little bit. 

**Author's Note:**

> EDITED Nov 24 2020 (fixed some grammar issues, changed a few sentences.) 
> 
> Stephen King might think that Bill's stutter is gone, but guess what, Steenie? I don't think so. Especially if we're going with film canon here and they don't forget about each other afterwards. Also, I refuse to just erase a part of him, lmao, the fuck, Stephen. Furthermore, I have a bit of a stutter occassionally because lol 80hd, so I was sitting in the living room just trying out sentences to see how Bill would say them and then I actually got stuck on some of them. Sad yeehaw, pardners.
> 
> The title is from a song by Shark Puppy (yes, that fictional band in that IT AU based on a throwaway easter egg in the Duma Key) called A Letter from a Fortune Cookie; lyrics written by yours truly. Imagine being me and using your own song lyrics as the fic title - the self-involvement, the narcissism, the flavour.
> 
> I love one Patricia Blum Uris, and I love one Ms. Audra Phillips, so I tried my best to treat them gently in this story but we all know that where Mr Stanley Uris drinks his Respect Women Juice in the morning, Big Bill Denbrough starts his mornings with a toddy of Dumb Bitch Juice, so Stan and Patty have an understanding of what's happening (and Patty gets to say my favourite line in the whole story), but Audra is a little in the background, which is why I tried my darndest to have Stanley respect her, and she got to leave Bill, not the other way around.
> 
> Fifteen million merits if you caught my lame-o reference to The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt somewhere around the middle of this story! Also, yes, I listened to Canada jay birdsong for two minutes to figure out what they sound like and how best achieve ekphrasis in the description. 
> 
> TL;DR  
Thank you so much for reading! Make sure to smash that delicious kudos button, and if you're feeling generous in your heart and soul, leave a little comment and be my balsames teor. Ta, darlings.


End file.
